


Love in a Simple Touch

by immortalbanner



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Blood, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Merrick scene, Missing Scene, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Protective Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, References to Homophobia, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26439433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immortalbanner/pseuds/immortalbanner
Summary: While Joe is getting tortured at Merrick's, Nicky just wishes he could hold his hand through the process.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 8
Kudos: 167





	Love in a Simple Touch

**Author's Note:**

> This is bascially a snippet of what happened at Merrick's. I actually wasn't sure if I was going to post this and 2k words later here we are. I do have some Arabic in here and I did try hard to research if the romanised versions were correct but obviously can't always sure, I did do my best but feel free to correct me!

When Nicky opened his eyes, it had felt like he’d been dead longer than usual.

His eyes strained as they adjusted to the light. He wasn’t completely coherent, so when he tried to move to only to realise he was completely restrained, he gasped.

He looked down at himself, seeing his arms, legs, and chest all strapping him down to a stretcher. On instinct, he tried to pull his arms free. He groaned, feeling the straps burn against his skin.

He looked around the room as best he could. He saw a collection of needles and could hear beeping machines around him, which he realised he was attached to.

That wasn’t his main focus.

“Joe!”

He was next to him, equally strapped down and shirtless. The slow rise and fall of his chest was the only indication he was still alive. That was the closest thing that brought relief.

He pulled on the strap again, hard enough that it burned again. His arm felt so heavy which he had to guess was because of the sedative. He needed so desperately to get out of it so he could at least hold Joe until he woke up. Dying was always hard but each time they had to make sure the other was still alive too. He’d woken up in Joe’s arms more time than he could count, and he’d done the same for him. It was how they operated as two halves of one.

The doctor they’d seen before — Kozak was it? — was walking around the lab.

He realised there were tubes filled with blood. It could only be his own and Joe’s. He felt a wave of nausea. No, not that. Not the two of them being used as nothing less than lab rats.

“Ah, finally one of you are awake.”

Kozak was in a lot of ways, hard to describe. Her figure was birdlike but Nicky could easily recognise her as a threat. She was baring her teeth at the idea to achieve success outside imaginable bounds, and she clearly was willing to break all recent ethics guidelines to get to it.

When they’re out of this, he was definitely going to have to kill her in a way the makes her suffer in the worst way possible.

Joe gave a soft groan and against his better judgment, he breathed out his real name. “Yusuf, hal tasmaeuni?” He asked it in Arabic just so the words could feel at least a little private and more personal.

Kozak looked at Joe, and picked up a large syringe full of some kind of clear liquid. She walked to Joe and stuck it inside his arm. He heard Joe groan in pain as Kozak pressed down on the plunger.

Even from where he sat, he could see the light in Joe’s eyes disappear. He’d seen it so many times before and it hurt every time.

Ever since Andy and Quynh had told them that they would die eventually, a wave of dread would wash over him through each one of Joe’s deaths. Every single time he was worried it would be the last time he got to see him, to touch him, to kiss him.

One day it would happen, and they would either die in the other’s arms or find a way to retire until the other died on his own. Not in a battle where he was only more vulnerable, instead they’d have as close to a normal life as they could get.

Maybe destiny would be kind and they would lose it at the same time, as they did when they’d gained it.

He just knew he wasn’t going to lose him strapped down to a stretcher like this.

He heard the sound of the machine monitoring them making a low, long beep sound that he knew meant he was dead. As he waited for the sound he knew would mean he had come back to life, his heart thumped in his ears.

He whispered prayers, despite not having done so in over 800 years. His faith had slowly went away a long time ago but if there was any chance anyone was up there, he prayed to Them.

_Please don’t let him die. I need him here with me. I can’t get through all of this without him. We were lucky enough to get into this together. I can’t listen to him die until Andy, Booker, and Nile get us out of here, if that ever even happens. Just please please please don’t let him die._

He heard the sound of the beeping that meant he was still alive and felt himself relax.

Kozak had her own smile. “400 milligrams of morphine and still alive. Incredible.”

Nicky wouldn’t take his eyes off Joe. He stopped himself from murmuring his name again. He wished he could even just stretch his arm out to touch his arm. They weren’t close enough to do that.

Kozak must’ve seen him staring.

“You can hear the machines. This was a lethal dose and he still came back.” She flicked the syringe with a smile. “Hubby will be fine.”

He was too exhausted to glare at her and her smug face.

“You’re really doing all this for accolades?” he asked. “I know that scientists make an oath to cause no harm.”

“I think sometimes something like ethics is less important when it’s for the greater good.”

He had no doubt she’d thought that. For as long as he could remember people used the most unethical actions to justify what they thought would be for whatever greater good they saw. It was a never ending cycle.

“Nicky.”

His head turned towards Joe, whose chest was heavy. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

“Ana huna,” he replied. In Arabic. Because his Yusuf would always use Italian when he was distressed. He always returned it in Arabic. It had always been the way they’d communicated from the point his Arabic was passable and Yusuf didn’t always have the smallest smile on his lips as he’d attempted to do it without his accent.

 _I’ll always be here_ , he wanted to add but he didn’t have the energy. He already knew Kozak was getting ready to kill him too.

“So, this is it,” Joe said quietly, retreating back to Arabic too.

“I guess it is.” He swallowed. “I love you, ya hayati.”

“I love you too, my love. Until the stars go out.”

His heart clenched in his chest when he switched to the Geonese dialect that was their only connection when they’d met. Hearing it with the same words they’d used as vows 900 years ago when they’d declared themselves married made him want to sob on the stretcher, Kozak be damned.

A single tear ran down his face as he returned the vows. “And we’re left in only darkness with light in each other.”

* * *

He died a few more times after that.

They’d been poisoned, suffocated, wounded, and so many ways Nicky never wanted to recall. He could handle it but the shouts and screams he could hear from Joe made him want to take everything so his love wouldn’t have to die a single time more in the cold lab.

After the fifteenth death, he woke up to see Copley hovering around the lab. Kozak said something to him he couldn’t quite hear and moved to the back of the lab, although he couldn’t see where exactly.

Copley walked closer to them, although not close enough that if he could reach, he could strangle him.

“How are you holding up?”

The way he’d asked if made him want to scream.

_This is your fault. You are at fault if Yusuf dies. If I die. It would all be your fault for no reason other than your precious science._

“Why did you do this?” he asked, looking Copley directly in the eye. He’d wanted to at least be a little intimidating but he was so exhausted and Joe hadn’t started breathing again.

Copely looked at him and there might’ve been a twinge of empathy in his eye. “Just be happy you weren’t separated. They were going to but I was able to convince them otherwise.”

_Oh thank you so much! You made sure I could listen to the love of my life die countless times._

In truth though, being separated would’ve been so much worse. It hurt to see Yusuf in pain but that didn’t compare to the thought of not knowing where he was and what they were doing to him.

“You had a wife, no? Would’ve you wanted her to go through something like this?”

He flinched and looked at the ground. “How many years?”

“Hm?”

“How many years? Have you two been together?”

He paused, doing the maths in his head. “900. And 20. 920 years.” Their usual answer to that question was 10 to 15 years. They usually told people they were both 35 and those were good numbers where people still understood they had been together for a long time.

It wasn’t enough though. The truthful answer was the only one that carried what they had, where someone could hear and truly understand what they had was special and not fleeting. That they had their own kind of love that no mortal life could match.

Copley looked at him again. “I’m sure you can guess no one else gets that. That you two are lucky in millions of ways.”

Nicky thought about all the hard times they’d had to be together. Even when you put your differences aside to be able to fall in love in the first place, the external forces that wanted to keep you apart tried to be stronger than that love. Joe had once said they were soulmates who were born at the wrong time but were given a chance through their immortality.

“I’m aware. I’m sure you could imagine that being with someone that long — loving someone that long — makes hearing their pain hurt so much more.”

He didn’t respond, only went back to stare at the ground.

Nicky looked back at Joe and saw there was a slow rise and fall in his chest again. He wasn’t sure what Kozak had stuck him with but it had caused him to go into spasms and froth at the mouth until he’d died, dead eyes looking directly at him.

“Yusuf?”

“Sono qui, Nico. Sono qui.”

He would give his left leg to be able to just hold him again, to comfort him for at least a few seconds. To let him heal in his arms properly and he could kiss the pain away.

Joe always showed his love through his words. Nicky had always showed it through touch. When they’d confessed their feelings for one another, Joe went on a long monologue about how much he’d come to mean to him, how much he’d wanted to cherish him throughout their immortality. Nicky showed it back with tender touches and being the one to allow their lips to meet for the first time. He’d held his face delicately in his hands, trying to show him he’d felt like something precious to him.

In the nearly millennium they’d loved each other, they’d shown ways to love each other a million times over. Now he wasn’t sure how he could show it while strapped down and away from his love.

He’d spent a lot of the time thinking. He thought about when they went to Malta and lived there for a few months in 2013. He’d thought about soaking in the culture, swimming in the Mediterranean, Joe developing a habit of calling him ‘sabiħ’, making love in the early mornings, feeding each other pastizzi, finding Joe’s old sketches of Nicky in the safe house they had in Luqa.

He missed it. Life was so simple there. They both spoke the language and had made plenty of jokes that the blend of Arabic and Italian — some French and English in between now — made it a language that in some ways connected them. They’d stopped by the island a few times during Sicily’s occupation. By then they took in languages so easily and learned the dialect of Arabic it was with Sicily’s influence.

He knew Copley watched as he looked at Joe. He coughed a few times, catching his breath with a small groan.

There was so much he wanted to say but even if he’d switched languages, it’d still feel too intimate to say in front of other people. Joe could go on long monologues no matter who was around, no matter the language, no matter the situation. That was just who Joe was.

They’d spent centuries in situations where they had to hide their love for each other — even now with some of the countries they went to — that this century was full of him unapologetically declaring his love for him. Whether it be going to the Netherlands to get legally married (through aliases but still legally married) or a familiar press of lips on a busy city street.

Andy sometimes got frustrated because she was sure if any enemies knew of their relationship they’d find a way to use it against them. That didn’t deter Joe.

Nicky was different. Touch was the way he showed Joe he loved him because that was a quiet deceleration of love. It was what he’d — and in some ways Joe — grown accustomed to. He’d never be able to grasp the poetry of words like Joe could, but he did have touch. He was meant to always have that but he couldn’t even reach out for the gentlest touch of fingers to say ‘we will get through this.’

He knew this man, every crevice, every muscle, every freckle. He knew what every look meant. He didn’t need words for that. There weren’t words out there that could describe what they had. Not his husband, his lover, his heart, his true love, his soulmate.

He was simply his Joe, his Yusuf. Because words were hard but their love wasn’t. Joe could write pages upon pages upon pages how he felt about him — lord knows he had — but those words never measured to him saying his Nicky, his Nicolò. They were so simple and yet they both felt the weight of it.

They were soulmates but they were more. Two halves of a whole that were tied together as if there was an invisible string. Two halves that became whole on that battlefield when they’d realised they weren’t going to get close to killing the other.

Destiny, like with Andy, Quynh, Booker, and Nile but more. They weren’t just meant to one day find each other, they were meant to be together the way they were.

He hoped his eyes could communicate every single one of those things because there was no way he’d ever be able to express that to Joe.

“Nicky,” Joe breathed out and he smiled, brown eyes full of life. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He felt a clench in his chest. “Me too.”

He heard the sound of footstep and Kozak asking Copley to leave. They both looked in her direction, a grin on her face and her eyes wild. “I need more samples now that it’s definite you two are far from dying.”

He ignored the implication she thought she could’ve killed them during this experiment.

“I do have to ask, have either of you aged? If not, when did it stop? Why did it stop? Does it need to be triggered by something?”

They were both silent. Her eyes shifted between the two of them. “Does it slow it down at all? The aging process? Is dying of old age possible?”

Their silence remained. Her grin didn’t stifle. She approached Nicky with a scalpel. She ran a finger down his chest, causing him to shiver in disgust. “What was that you told Mr Copley? That you’ve been lovers for 900 years? Hm, I’d stick around for 900 years for that too.”

He spat in her face. No one could talk about his Yusuf like he was just some piece of meat, and absolutely no one could especially simplify their love down to superficial passion of their bodies.

She glared at him and it felt like ice. “Just for that, I think I will cut him open first. Slowly.”

She moved away from him and Nicky felt like he was going to vomit. Maybe if he let himself drown in it he won’t have to listen to the pain he’d just caused to happen to Joe.

He knew Joe wouldn’t blame him and would hate for him to blame himself. He did his best to forgive himself for it. Feeling like he was at fault for Yusuf’s pain was never an easy thing for him to come to terms with and no longer blame himself. He’d hurt him enough when they’d met, he never ever wanted to be the reason he was in pain after that.

He’d give anything to be able to just hold his hand as he started to scream in pain as the scalpel dug into his skin.

He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for his turn.

**Author's Note:**

> Tranlations:
> 
> Hal tasmaeuni- Arabic for "do you hear me"
> 
> Ana huna- Arabic for "I'm here"
> 
> Sono qui- Italian for "I'm here" 
> 
> Sabiħ- Maltese for "beautiful", specficially the masculine form of it


End file.
